"You Missed Out on Me"
I wanted to speak these words
straight into your eyes,
not breathe them into emptiness,
not whisper them to your ghost.
I spent a lifetime
holding tight to a thread...
the maybe of you,
the fragile possibility
that one day
you'd look up and wonder
who I was becoming,
who I was without you.
But you never wondered.
You never asked.
You were always
just a heartbeat away,
a call you never placed,
a message left unsent.
I didn’t need your money,
your sorry excuses,
your careful explanations.
I needed less than you imagined.
Just to sit across from you
and watch recognition bloom
in your eyes,
to feel, even briefly,
like I was yours,
would have been enough.
To be seen.
To be chosen, just once,
by you.
I used to think that would be everything.
But silence is all you left me.
And now it's permanent.
People say you aren't worth my grief...
maybe they're right.
But I'm not grieving you.
I'm grieving the childhood
I should've had,
the safety stolen from me
before I could defend it,
the wounds you never even knew existed,
the father I dreamed you'd become
long after I learned to survive without you.
When you died,
they didn't tell me.
Your daughter.
Your firstborn.
A side note in someone else's story,
an afterthought buried beneath
someone else's pain.
I deserved the truth.
I deserved more.
I deserved you,
even if you never deserved me.
Still, here I am...
breathing deeply,
building quietly,
raising children
who will never question
their worth,
because I have made sure
their hearts know love
without hesitation,
without strings.
You should've been there.
You should've tried.
But you didn’t.
And in that choice,
you lost the chance
to witness who I became...
not just your daughter,
but a woman forged in fire,
a soul you’ll never get to know.
You missed the best parts of me...
the strength,
the softness,
the storm,
the survival.
You missed the story
you helped start
but never stayed to finish.
So this isn’t for you anymore.
It’s for me.
I am not your silence.
I am my own becoming.
And that...
that’s truly what's everything.
—Kristanna
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